2001 Z28 Project Camaro - Strappin’ In

The importance of safety should never be overlooked, so here’s a great way to stay firmly in the seat of your fourth-gen.

It may sound a bit corny, but to be a good driver you need to become one with the car. After all, you don’t need a lecture from Master Yoda to understand that you can’t concentrate on piloting your car if you’re sliding and flopping around the seats. In the case of our ’01 Z28 project Camaro, Black Betty, the factory seats had some bolstering, and while they were somewhat effective for cruising down a winding mountain road, they came up lacking when attempting any serious driving. The factory seatbelts didn’t help either since they only lock down and hold you in place under braking, and we’re typically accelerating while making turns in this ride.

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So, we decided the way to fix this was to install some more aggressive competition seats along with a four-point harness system. Of course, that presented a new problemfiguring out how to mount the shoulder belts. Putting in a cage was out since Licata has two young sons who dig getting picked up from school in the Camaro (at ages 7 and 10 they already get it, and their peers think it’s a pretty cool ride, too), so we needed something easily removable. Turns out, there is a small company called Gen 4 Racing that recently began manufacturing just what we need. Owner Corey Bedortha developed a removable and height-adjustable harness bar for guys that wanted the flexibility of running bar and race harnesses at the track and the ability to keep the backseat available for daily driving duties. With the harness anchoring system figured out, we hit up Corbeau for a set of their sleek and supportive CR1 seats along with some of their harness belts.

Welcome to the 2013 Chevrolet Performance LSX Shootout, held at Lucas Oil Raceway Park, in historic Indianapolis, Indiana. Smokey burnouts and nasty wheelstands set the tone for an outstanding weekend in Indianapolis!